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YSU women look for better shooting
Benjamin, Jackson
getting healthier
By STEVE WILAJ
YOUNGSTOWN
Completely healthy for the first 16 games.
Then, the Youngstown State women’s basketball team sees two starters — point guard Indiya Benjamin and forward Janae Jackson — suffer injuries about a month ago.
They’ve both returned and are on the mend to full health for the recently struggling Penguins — leaving third-year head coach John Barnes to hope for this best-case scenario.
“Maybe it’s meant to be we just slowly work ourselves back to healthy and have a great run in the tournament,” he said at Tuesday’s news conference. “But we’re trying to take it one game at a time and we’ll see what happens Thursday.”
With just four regular season games remaining, YSU (16-8, 7-7 Horizon League) welcomes Valparaiso to Beeghly Center at 5:15 p.m. on Thursday for the first game of a doubleheader, which concludes with the Penguins men facing Wright State at 7:45 p.m.
The banged up YSU women are coming off a loss to lowly Cleveland State on Saturday (the Penguins shot just 24 percent) and are facing a Crusaders team that beat them 65-60 on Jan. 23.
“They were playing really well at that time and they have a lot of weapons,” Barnes said. “We were really struggling with both Indiya and Janae getting hurt in the UIC game [on Jan. 21]. So we’re hoping that they’re close to 100 percent this time.”
Jackson (8.1 points, 5.9 rebounds per game) played in her first game on Saturday since badly aggravating her ankle on Feb. 6 against Detroit. She scored nine points in 12 minutes off the bench against CSU, as Barnes called her “one of our bright spots.”
Benjamin (8.9 points) hasn’t missed a game in dealing with a nagging ankle injury, but she hasn’t been her usual play-making self. The sophomore went just 2 of 15 against the Vikings on Saturday and was held scoreless in YSU’s previous game at Milwaukee on Feb 13.
“She would definitely say no,” Barnes said when asked if Benjamin’s ankle injury is effecting her performances. “But when you’re hurt. ... it’s in the back of her mind. Until she feels completely comfortable on it, she’s gonna struggle. You can see how she played. She was being aggressive, but she just wasn’t herself.
“We need Janae at 25-30 minutes and we need Indiya at full strength where she’s shooting 40-some percent from 3 and getting six, seven, eight assists.”
YSU is hoping both of those scenarios are coming soon, while it’s also hoping to leave Saturday’s dreadful shooting display (6 of 34 on 3-pointers) in the past.
“It was a very unfortunate situation,” starting sophomore guard Kelley Wright said. “We do a lot of shooting drills in practice and we shot well the whole week leading up, but we just couldn’t get them to fall that game.”
It was uncharacteristic of YSU, which is leading the conference with 10.3 made 3’s per game and is second in the league in 3-point percentage. Barnes knows it’s crucial for his team to shoot well, especially since it creates opportunities for leading scorer forward Sarah Cash (14.9 points), who scored just seven points against CSU.
“If we would have made some shots, they wouldn’t have been able to do that and then Sarah would have done her thing,” Barnes said. “You have to make shots — it’s not rocket science. That’s our game. We’re usually a good shooting team, so if we don’t make shots it’s tough for us.”
YSU sits in sixth place in the Horizon League. After Valpo on Thursday, UIC comes to town on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. (also the first game of a doubleheader).
“These games are very important,” Wright said. “Coming off that loss, we know that winning this Thursday will mean that much more. If we get that win, it will get our morale up a little more.”